Friday, January 15, 2010

Today marks the end of my third week of training at my new job. Everything is going really well, and I thought I’d take a few moments to fill you all in on that.

As I mentioned earlier, my training started on the last week of December with a day of company orientation. After that, we broke off into regional training classes, with mine consisting of three other people. There’s the lady who smelled like KFC, the lady with no front teeth and the lisp, and another woman my age who is a black belt in karate.

We went through a week of intensive classroom training where we learned all about the companies policy and procedures, and learned how to navigate through the various programs we’d need to use to service the people who call in. There was a lot to learn, and to make sure we were grasping everything completely, we had a series of tests to prove our knowledge.

Last Friday was the customer service test. We ran through a couple of fake scenarios in front of the on-site Quality Department manager with our lead trainer and were graded. I passed with flying colors, meeting all the required points. All of my other classmates passed as well, but KFC-Lady and Denture Candidate didn’t score as high as Miss Karate and I did.

This past Monday’s training class was our final chance to review of all that we had learned the previous week, and then we were given two tests: One to test our product knowledge, and the other to test our knowledge of the half-dozen computer programs we were trained on. These tests were serious. On either exam, if you scored between 74 and 85 points, you’d be placed on a probationary status pending a re-test the next day. If you didn’t get higher than that minimum score of 85 the second time, you’d get let go. If on the first try, though, if you scored less than 74 points, you were immediately terminated. There was considerable pressure with that threat of termination, but before I left that day, I learned that I passed both exams.

The next day, (this past Tuesday, this would have been), I showed up for class and it was only myself and Miss Karate. It appeared that KFC-Lady and Denture Candidate didn’t score well enough on either the Product test or the Technology test to be able to continue further.

Since then, Miss Karate and I have been on the phones, getting used to what kind of calls we’ll be receiving once we get out on the floor and into production. Normally the procedure is to have the new-hires sit with a seasoned agent to learn the ropes, but apparently our trainers feel that Miss Karate and I are advanced enough where they thought we wouldn’t need it. We’ve been taking calls by ourselves all week with our trainers in earshot in case we have a question.

I feel pretty comfortable with what I’ve been doing on the phones, but I am going to give it another week before I go out on my own. That extra week will help boost my confidence some more, and I’ll get more exposure to the different types of calls that I’ll be getting on a normal basis.

Glad to hear things are going well for you! It's interesting how different companies have different training atmospheres. At eBay I've only taken one test for a training which required a specific score (95% believe it or not). Every other test has not had any requirements whatsoever. It does make one wonder though what type of environment it's going to be on the floor.